WHICKER: Els has disastrous start at The Masters

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Most nightmares do not appear on the Internet, or in front of thousands of mortified golf fans. Most nightmares go away when you awaken, and then fade from memory by lunchtime.

Ernie Els, 46, winner of two U.S. Opens and two British Opens and the second-best golfer who ever came from the African continent, was stripped naked by his own putter Thursday, for all the world to see.

The Masters patrons who shuffled their feet and shook their heads will not forget it. Neither will playing partner Jason Day, who finally had to look away.

Most ominously, neither will Els.

The worst part wasn’t the 2-footer he missed for par, or the 2-footer he missed for bogey, or the 2-footer he missed for double bogey, and on and on. The worst part was the identity of the green at Augusta National, after Els walked off with six putts and a 9. It was the first green. There were 17 other hallucinogens waiting.

“I don’t know why I stayed out there,” Els said later, in a voice that was stunned way past anger. “But you love the game and you’ve got to have respect for the tournament, and so forth. But it’s unexplainable. It’s the last thing you want to do on a course at this level.”

It did not get better, not appreciably. Els shot 80, eight over par. The hole never quit moving for him, all the way to the end, when he missed a 4-footer on 17 and another on 18. He had 39 putts for the round. Jordan Spieth, the tournament leader, had 25, and thus leads Els by 14.

Els said he lost count on No. 1, finally backhanding the next-to-last putt and missing that, too. He wasn’t alone. The official Masters scorekeepers had Els shooting a 10 on No. 1, with seven putts. At that point he wasn’t quibbling.

“Tee to green, I’m not bad,” he said. From the other side of the green, he’s not bad either. He made a 38-foot birdie putt on the fifth hole. But the closer he got to the hole, the more it resembled the river Styx.

“I couldn’t take the putter back,” Els said. “I was standing there. I’ve made thousands of 3-footers. I just couldn’t take it back.

“A lot of people have stopped playing the game, you know. I’m not sure where I’m going from here. So I don’t know. We’ll see.”

The condition known as the “yips” is golf’s most lethal malignancy. It is foreign to nearly every other sport. The closest equivalents are in baseball, where Steve Blass woke up one day and couldn’t throw strikes, and Steve Sax couldn’t complete a simple 4-to-3.

The Mayo Clinic says that the yips aren’t necessarily found inside your head. They can be attributed to focal dystonia, a problem with the neurological system. David Duval and Ian Baker-Finch, both considered best in the world at one point, lost their entire games, and the yips infected Ben Hogan and Sam Snead and caused Tommy Armour to make a 23 on a par-5 hole.

But there has been nothing like this, visible on so many platforms, and on such a glossy stage.

After the third short miss, Els stood back and tried to gather himself, as he tried to squint away his astonishment. That didn’t work either. When he finally finished, he was too shattered to do anything but casually slap the putter head.

Someone asked him how he would punish that putter and he shook his head.

“I couldn’t putt with a stick,” he said. “You have these snakes in your head. ... What holds you back from doing your normal thing? I don’t know what it is. I can go to that practice green right now and make 20 straight 3-footers.”

Or three straight 20-footers.

Els’ colleagues were sympathetic but not particularly eager to talk about it. It is the cobra in the room, except it’s invisible.

“It’s the first time I’ve ever seen anything like that,” Day said. “I feel for Ernie. You don’t want to see it, because it can be sometimes career-ending.”

The first green has a ton of hairpin turns, and it sits on one of the highest points of the course, a prime target for fierce winds. Els and Day played in the worst of their gusts, while Spieth shot his 66 in the calmer morning.

But Els also twitched on a 1-footer at the Dunhill Links tournament last September. It’s easy to tell someone to face his fears. It’s hard when no one else around him can.

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